Cannes 2025 Review: DANDELION'S ODYSSEY Charts a Post-Human Cosmic Journey

Momoko Seto’s feature debut Dandelion’s Odyssey opens with a stark depiction of a nuclear event that eradicates life on Earth.

Amid (the rather PG) devastation, four dandelion seeds, once part of the same flower, are propelled into space, becoming cosmic nomads. From this minimalist premise emerges a film that eschews traditional story in favor of visual allegory, ecological reflection, and an exploration of displacement.

Seto’s method, developed in her PLANET ∑ short film series, combines high-resolution macro photography, ultra-slow motion, and animation to construct the sci-fi docu-fable that Dandelion’s Odyssey becomes. In PLANET ∑, she transposed volcanic landscapes onto a microbial cosmos. With Dandelion’s Odyssey, she extends this approach to feature length, maintaining her focus on biological temporality and environmental degradation.

At its core, the film continues Seto’s artistic exploration of rootlessness and transformation. Born in Tokyo, educated within the French school system, and later trained at Le Fresnoy in France, Seto’s own experience of dislocation parallels that of her film’s protagonists.

The dandelion seeds, Dendelion, Baraban, Léonto, and Taraxa, are never named in the film, yet each is animated with distinct, idiosyncratic traits. Dandelion’s Odyssey is a non-verbal work in which choreography and gesture carry the narrative. The animation of the seeds draws more from physical performance than from conventional character design.

The physical language is complemented by a crafted sonic landscape, developed in collaboration with sound designer Nicolas Becker and composer Quentin Sirjacq. Together, they construct the auditory world of the seeds through non-verbal cues. The absence of spoken language further distances the film from an anthropocentric perspective, an effect heightened by the recurring cataclysmic events and shifts in universe, each marked by a transformation in sonic and symbolic language.

Filmed over more than two years using 17 cameras, the work relies heavily on time-lapse photography to compress natural processes, ferns unfurling, fungi releasing spores, moss overtaking stone, into sequences resembling geological choreography.

A tree mushroom becomes a tower, a patch of mold expands into a burgeoning metropolis. This evolving visual grammar suggests not linear progress, but cyclical transformation, as the seeds drift through landscapes that feel both primordial and post-apocalyptic. Seto’s ecological fable is situated within a dystopian framework, yet life persists in the absence of humans.

Cyclical renewal remains a central motif, as the dandelion seeds appear to restart in a new world undergoing early stages of evolution, with primordial flora and insectoid fauna repopulating the environment. Seto’s choice to film actual plants, insects, and fungi, rather than use digital simulations, reinforces her commitment to material presence and supports the film’s overall photorealistic aesthetic.

Dandelion’s Odyssey unfolds as a non-verbal adventure tale, and it is not difficult to imagine it as a video game. The seeds confront challenges collectively or become separated, with one of their defining traits often proving decisive in moments of danger. Seto subtly anthropomorphises the seeds, allowing relationships to form between them, an approach that fosters empathy in the viewer and provides the story with emotional weight.

At its core, Seto’s story is archetypal, concerned with survival, fellowship, and hope. In some respects, Dandelion’s Odyssey recalls last year’s animated feature Flow from Lithuania, though Seto’s work is more understated. Here, furry animals are replaced by dandelion seeds and insects, a less immediately endearing cast, yet one that still supports moments of surrealism reminiscent of Švankmajer´s insectoid imagery.

Seto forges her own path by grounding the film in primordial flora and fauna, which shapes its visual aesthetic. The inclusion of actual insects lends the film a quasi-documentary feel, even as its narrative follows a fictional structure shaped by the highly anthropomorphised seeds. While the adventure plays out on a relatively small scale, limited largely to the ecosystem of an alien garden, Seto expands the film’s visual scope, particularly in space sequences with painterly quality.

In light of the acclaim for Flow, Dandelion’s Odyssey may face a more challenging reception. Yet its meditative pacing and emphasis on survivorship suggest a form of storytelling that could, in another context, resemble a Pixar-style adventure, one focused less on spectacle than on post-apocalyptic endurance.

Dandelion's Odyssey won the International Federation of Film Critics' award at the 78th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes.